Date: Sun, 4 Aug 2024 20:05:13 -0700
From: Neil <neil@oldschoolsorcery.com>
To: Old School Sorcery <admin@oldschoolsorcery.com>
Organizing the first 2HD OS Sorcery Tournament
By: Neil Troy (@bnrrx7 or neil@oldschoolsorcery.com)
Summary:
August 3rd, 2024 The Beasts of the Bay through the first Old School Sorcery event
featuring Two-Headed Dragon as the main event. 24 attendees raised over $2k dollars for
charity. Adam @abarth defeated Tony @mrtonyy with a Great Old One hit. Brian Smith was
the guest of honor.
Long Form:
At the inaugural Beasts of the Bay Sorcery Open Event: Angel's Egg or Devil's Egg, the
Beasts welcomed 24 sorcerers to play in an OS Sorcery event formally introducing the 2v2
format of Two-Headed Dragon (2HD). Held in Milpitas, CA at a church, no better location
could be planned for the artist Brian Smith to show off his amazing original art and
talent. This is the story of how the event came to be.
This event came to fruition when I kept bugging Jeremy Chien, founding member of the
Beasts of the Bay, about "don't we normally run 3-4 events a year?" Since our premier OS
event is officially early 2025, we weren't hosting an event in late summer/early fall.
In fact, it was roughly after Satanic Panic, May 2024, when our plans started to form.
Jerm, Nick Aiello (Social Deepspawner), and I would throw down a mat in-between rounds
at Satanic Panic and show off Sorcery to the masses. Our AirBnB also hosted many events
after hours, bringing in many OS players into the Sorcery realm. We also went to Mox
Boarding house and got some sweet packs for a Chaos Draft.
When pondering what kind of event made sense to host the notion of a Sorcery event with
the Beasts spin on it seemed like a great idea. Throughout the year Jerm has been
inviting us over to his house to jam Sorcery and although we enjoy 1v1 Sorcery we've
been feeling we want a more casual hang with your friends kind of feel. We tried 4
player free-for-all and we just didn't enjoy the dead time for 3x not-your-turns and
whose stuff was tapped or untapped was annoying. The Beasts have a history with 2HG and
so we started trying to develop 2HD and its rules set. We iterated on the size of the
realm and overall shape. What we settled on was 4x9 as our optimum size. We quickly
settled into a mechanic to give an incentive to play with your partner that is once your
sites are connected, you may summon to your partner's sites.
Since we wanted to keep things fun-for-most, banning Courtesan Thais and Roots of
Yggsrasil were straight forward. Some other interactions needed tweaking as well. "Ally"
in 2HD needed to mean only your game objects otherwise things were quite abusive. We
also included that as a team you go to Death's Door but both heads must be killed. A
dead head still could participate with their minions but could no longer draw cards at
the start of turn.
All of this backstory is to say Jerm and I wanted to introduce 2HD to the Sorcery
community in a big way. At the time we were planning our event we knew neither of us
were going to Mobstercon (although I absolutely wish I could have gone) and EC wasn't
able to get a booth at GenCon. So we planned for August 3rd, 2024 as a full day event to
embrace Sorcery on the West Coast. A common element for OS events is to subtly change
something about the game and keep it fresh. To continue that tradition in addition to
launching 2HD was to severely limit Angel's Egg and Devil's Egg. Both of these cards
either draw the game out or rapidly accelerate it To combat that we instituted the old
legend rule for both Egg's (only one could be under your ownership at any point in
time). And with that we put out the call on every platform we could think of from
Reddit, Facebook, Discord & The Play Network for a 2HG tournament called "Angel's Egg or
Devil's Egg".
With a format set, next up was trying to get an artist to come out. I had been talking
to as many artists as I could on my quest to get APs directly from all of them and Brian
Smith and I hit it off instantly. In talking with him it turned out he had never worked
a TCG event before! After making sure he was comfortable with it I invited him out on
our dime. In typical OS Open events you request a commission for the event which will be
auctioned on-site for an artist/charity split. Brian said it might be tough so I didn't
pressure him since it was short notice. However, a few days before the event he
surprised me with not only one piece but two fully varnished and framed pieces for our
event!
I would summarize OS events typically are hitting on multiple points:
1) create a great playing experience;
2) support the artists;
3) bring out the money for charity (our charity was The Bill Wilson Center);
4) make an unforgettable experience for your attendees.
Outside of the main 2HD event, we planned for an alpha draft, potentially cubing, and
the night before the event a full box sealed tournament (one box per person!). Once the
invite to the event was live I had to figure out ways to make an unforgettable
experience for our guests. Arthurian Legends was having release dates firmly announced
and even some spoilers were happening. I thought the ultimate get for an OS event would
be to get a card reveal. It literally has never happened! How could you reveal a card
for an OS event if you are playing cards from 1993/94? But with Sorcery I saw an opening
to try and secure a card reveal and notch a first for the OS community.
I initially was cautious about approaching EC, "what's the worst that could happen?" I
only felt confident approaching EC when I felt I had a compelling story line. We are the
ONLY group, or store, in the Bay Area supporting Sorcery. We are running weekly events
from Casual Meets to Learn-to-Play. We are literally traveling the country introducing
OS players to this amazing game. On top of that we are putting skin in the game. We have
a venue, we have attendees, we have an artist, we have a charity, we are an established
group of professionals doing events like this for years. When I felt confident that we
were worthy I approached EC, of which I had never talked to any of them before. To my
surprise Erik responded quickly in the affirmative and put me into contact with Chase.
With seemingly the stamp of approval Chase and I had a Zoom meeting and we discussed
some specifics.
I want to say that in that chat with Chase I was educated. I'm a physicist by trade and
approach things very logically but Chase was able to pinpoint things from EC's side that
I hadn't considered. I'll paraphrase, but asking questions like "what does a reveal do
for you?" Was I trying to get more people to show up? Not really, I didn't want more
than 24 as logistics become annoying. So if not more people what? Well if you've read
down to here hopefully you get the hint, I was trying to make an unforgettable
experience for my attendees. Do something that has never been done in OS before! But
showing off a card to 24 people from their side might be a little lackluster. In the end
let's say I made a mini-business plan. We would stream the event, we would hit all of
our OS connections to post what we had accomplished. We would try and hit all Sorcery
content we could. And what was the message? "This is a community run OS Sorcery event.
This is what the OS community can do. This is an ethos to build a community around a
game so that we still play it 30 years from now."
It was not delivered like William Wallace in Braveheart, nor Maximus Aurelius in The
Gladiator. In the end I felt more like Verbal Kint in The Usual Suspects. That I
spit enough words out like a bumbling buffoon that maybe it'll work out. So when I
got the e-mail with the card reveal from none other than Melissa Benson as the
artist, that moment right there, I was Keyser Soze. Organizing the stream was
greatly aided by Navid from our local group who had experience streaming and setting
up Stream Lab with multiple views and cameras. He offered to help completely
unsolicited and put in hours and money on his own to support our endeavor. This in
itself is a sign of the OS community. There is no money to be won for a great event.
What we are doing is having a great time hanging out and any little thing that can
be done to improve it we will look into doing it.
Since we were planning an all day affair I wanted to wow the audience with food. Food
quality and quantity is a big deal to the Beasts. We are just south of The French
Laundry and some of the best restaurants in the world are right here. Ordering out from
Domino's would not make for a memorable experience. So I smoked a full packer brisket,
as well as 3 racks of ribs, and cooked 5 types of sausages, two different salads, and
smoked cauliflower for the vegetarians. I knew that if I could bring my grill to the
venue I could re-heat all the food I needed to, slowly across 4 hours and that was my
plan. Why have I spent time describing the food after talking about Sorcery? Because we
are crafting an experience for the guests. This isn't a "we'll have sandwiches in a bag"
situation.
In all of this what have I told the attendees? Almost nothing. Sign-ups were advertised
as an all-day charity 2HD event with food and beverages being supplied and Brian Smith
in attendance. They were informed of a casual tournament with no prizes on-the-line.
Raffle prizes were visible in a Google Doc provided to all those that signed up as well
as detailed information about the schedule.
With everything lined up fast forward to the tournament day. My son and I bought two
dozen donuts and set up a table at the entryway to the venue. Brian Smith arrived early
per our prior communications and he set up his amazing arsenal of originals and prints.
It took Brian about an hour to move some stuff around to best display his works. I had a
couple attendees arrive early to help setup. As guests arrived I greeted them all
individually, asked everyone to write their name on a nametag, handed them a stack of
swag, and offered them a donut.
Swag is another typical element of OS events. Things such as stickers, club patches, or
tokens are common. These are normally things that OS groups can buy at >100 count but
freely give away. If you've ever seen an OS battle vest you'll understand this swag is
no joke. Jerm is the swag master and for our event had a slew of items available. My
additions were to get a pre-signed copy of Angel's and Devil's Egg in the hands of every
attendee just for walking in and a custom made split card to commemorate the event.
Attendees arrived on-time with guests coming from as far away as Yosemite, Los Angeles,
and Phoenix just for the event. We had laid out the tables ahead of time so people could
walk in and get settled. Raffle prizes were on display, so were the tournament prizes,
and the signing station. I had a table setup for showing off your "Bling!" and Jerm and
I brought in the original Winter River and Island Leviathan to show off. At the formal
event starting time I gave a brief introduction to OS "have fun and don't be a dick"
mentality and then manually did pairings to try and break-up the groups of people that
came together. Since it was a new format for most people the first round had 70 mins as
people would learn how to play the format. Tournament slips were passed to me when
rounds were completed and as tables finished early attendees mingled and chatted with
Brian handing off stacks of cards for signatures.
I bungled the tournament SW. It was my mistake. I tried to alleviate someone experienced
in 2v2 pairing SW (he wrote the SW) and it didn't work out. I then had to manually make
all the pairings. It wasn't a huge deal, except for my ego. Throughout the event, I
checked in on the attendees when I could and act as a rules lawyer if I had to. We know
these games are complex and can take some time. To try to mitigate this every table had
a 2 min timer on it that you could use casually to help speed things up. After two two
rounds it was near 1 o'clock and it was lunch time. While the attendees were wrapping up
their match and getting food I needed to prepare the stream for the card reveal. The
timing of the reveal was coordinated with EC so that we would reveal the card first, be
able to share it among all of our platforms and then EC would reveal the art at GenCon.
So in this half-hour window I attempted to talk about how grateful we were to get to
reveal a card and how unique of an experience it was for an OS event to be able to do
that. Despite failing at the stream part for a bit, we were successful and the attendees
loved it.
When round three ended it created an annoying problem of 4 undefeated players. This
typically would necessitate two additional rounds. Since the stakes are low and people
are there to have fun I talked to the top-4 and asked what they'd like to do. Two people
chose to relinquish their seats so that they could go do an Alpha draft, thanks Navid
and Jesse. The other two played it out so we could determine a winner. This illustrates
part of the beauty of these kinds of events. Without a huge prize on the line people can
treat the event like the fun thing it is trying to be. The games can still be stressful
because you want to find the right line but they don't have to stress you out for 5-6
hours straight.
I got the alpha draft started quickly as it was easy to find 8 people that wanted a
unique draft experience. They were self-sufficient and were playing for the box's dust.
Again low stakes fun. Tony (@mrtonyy) asked to pair with me for the finals table and
Adam (@abarth) paired with Steve Hines. It was a long complex game but in the end Adam
got the win by swinging with a Great Old One.
On the auction side of things we raised $2,050 for charity @ nearly $100/head. We
casually played some games while I cleaned up my messes and chatted with Brian Smith.
Jeremy knew when Brian walked in with the promo Pudge that Brian wasn't walking out with
it. So Jeremy and I welcomed another butt into our art collective and will proudly
display it at future events. The event was great, we met a lot of new people and have
since connected with them again. Almost everyone that didn't know what the OS feel was
like was so impressed and commented like "oh, this is the kind of event I've always
wanted to go to." I was impressed by myself and the event, its the first time I've done
something like this and I'm very proud of it.
Thanks,
Neil